


Seven Pillars

by mysteryroach



Category: The Exorcist (1973)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-13 18:34:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15370779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysteryroach/pseuds/mysteryroach
Summary: Karras and Merrin meet under different circumstances. Things are sad.





	Seven Pillars

**Author's Note:**

> i've wanted to write this for over a year and have NEVER gotten it right but it's enough for me right now to say "ok! i'm done with it!" see, what little exorcist fic exists depicts karras and dyer as gay, which is correct, but none has depicted merrin as ALSO being gay and that is a terrible oversight. they're all gay because i'm gay and i said so.

Damien met Father Merrin in passing once. Merrin had just moved into the Residence, having accepted a teaching post at Georgetown.

“And this is our psychiatric counselor, Father Damien Karras.”

Merrin took Damien’s hand and held it.

“Damien. What a lovely name,” he said. He did not smile, but his eyes were warm.

That had been all. Like everyone, Damien was fascinated. Merrin’s books were incredibly popular among his fellow priests, and the man himself surely had stories to tell. But he didn’t. Damien saw him here and there, always alone, writing in a notebook or deep in thought. He didn’t dare bother him.

Damien was at a bar with Joe when the conversation finally, inevitably turned to the old man. Every weekend, Damien and Joe went to the art theater to see a film. This week, the movie was _El Topo_ , some acid thing that neither of them liked too much.

“You know, I _love_ the blasphemy thing that Mexican directors do, like remember that Bunuel picture we saw a few years ago? _Viridiana_ , right?”

Damien nodded.

“Oh, I loved that one. It’s kind of a sexy thrill to see something like that. But these new guys, they just don’t get it,” Joe continued. Damien laughed. Joe was so strange and so open. Damien joked about the blasphemy fixation, that maybe Joe would want to come into his office sometime.

“Oh, I would, Dims, you know I would. But ethics and all that,” Joe said with a wink. Joe was open about who he was, but he danced around it for Damien’s sake. Damien couldn’t admit it. There had only been men for him, but he had never broken vows, and even before he entered the order, he repressed it so well that it had never been a named part of him. And it never would be.

There was a time too, that he was in love with Joe, but the feelings burned out from the exhaustion of never being consummated. He still felt warmer towards Joe than he ever had toward anyone else, and if they hadn’t been priests, well, maybe...but he couldn’t bear to think about it too long.

Joe cleared his throat. “So, you’ve met that Father Merrin, right?”

“Sure, yeah. Just for a minute,” Damien said.

“I’ve been watching him a lot,” Joe said. “Just around. You can’t help but notice him, he towers over everybody else.”

Damien nodded. Merrin was striking. He looked like a crumbling Roman statue.

“He’s gay, you know,” Joe said in a low voice.

“Oh, come on,” Damien sighed.

“You come on! I can tell,” Joe said. “He’s got a sadness to him.”

“All priests have that,” Damien said. Joe was the only person he could say that to.

“Yeah, I know. But it’s different. I mean, I know that more and more queers are leaving the order now--”

“You keep reminding me,” Damien interrupted.

“I don’t know of any other way to seduce you,” Joe said. “But a guy like that, being that old, guys like that aren’t going to abandon their whole lives all of the sudden. They just don’t do that. They hold it in.”

Those words hit Damien hard.

“You still don’t know anything about him,” Damien said.

“Believe me, I know. Merrin is a queen,” Joe said.

 

**

Damien was running around the track early one morning when he saw Father Merrin again. He was sitting on a bleacher, hat beside him, pen in hand, taking notes. Damien ran over.

“Oh, Father Karras, hello!” Merrin said.

“Hi, Father,” Damien said between large gulps of air. “How are you?”

Teaching,” Merrin said and shook his head, “I’ll never be used to it. If not for this blasted heart of mine, I’d never teach again.”

Damien noticed for the first time that Merrin’s hands shook. They began to walk.

“How are you, Damien?” Merrin asked. The use of his first name felt intimate in a way he wasn’t used to. Damien wanted to remain unseen by anyone but Joe, the only person who knew he was a failure but cared about him anyway. This other man choosing to care about him, even though they didn’t know each other, felt suspicious to him.

“Oh, I’m all right, Father”, Damien said. He wouldn’t dare use Merrin’s first name.

“Hmm,” Merrin replied. “Are you?”

“Sure,” Damien said, unsteadily. Merrin did not reply, but he put his large, thin hand on Damien’s shoulder. That one gesture said, _I know you are lying, but I understand._ Damien felt uncomfortably exposed. This man knew he was a liar.

They walked up to the door of Damien’s office together.

“Well, here’s my stop,” Damien said with a slight, awkward smile.

“It was lovely to see you again, Damien,” Merrin said. “I hope to do it again sometime.”

Damien watched him leave and went into his office and shut the door. He ran his hand over his face.

 

There used to be mornings when Damien woke up expecting to be in Joe’s arms. There used to be times when he came so close to saying “just stay, just stay with me”, but he never did. He could never do it, and he knew that Joe couldn’t either. They were priests, everybody knew that priests were surreptitiously getting off somewhere. There were affairs with parishioners, there were clandestine trips to bathhouses. Damien wasn’t stupid. But he couldn’t go through with it. He was a failure enough as it was and he didn’t need another black mark on his record. The closest he ever came was sharing cigarettes with Joe, where he savored the slight dampness on the filter and stopped himself from imagining that mouth on him. He knew that none of this was healthy. But if he had been healthy, he never would have become a priest. There were other ways if he wanted to go to medical school. But Damien didn’t want them. He didn’t want to be in the world. He wanted to help people, but he didn’t want to be among them. The only thing that would teach him was eating, sleeping, and working exclusively in the company of other men under the shameful gaze of God. He could laugh at the irony sometimes, when he permitted his mind to drift. Because, really, what psychiatrist would ever take his own advice?

 

He thought of Merrin in Iraq. Living in excess far from home, truly free. He was impossibly envious. That was what he wanted. To be liberated from shame with the ability to return to the comfort he lived in. He wondered if Merrin carried shame around his body like an old coat the way he did. He wondered why Merrin would ever come back. He wondered if Merrin would lie if he asked. He really knew nothing about the man at all.

 

**

Damien saw Merrin at dinner every night and never spoke to him. He sat with Joe and felt the old man’s eyes on him. He pretended not to notice, and the pretending was conspicuous.

“You know, he’s staring at you,” Joe said one night.

“Yeah. I know.”

“What do you think he wants?” Joe asked.

“I don’t know.”

 

 

Once, Damien sneaked into one of Merrin’s lectures and he was shocked at what he saw. The man he thought was too dignified to be real was stumbling over his words, writing illegibly on the board, and completely losing the attention of the undergraduates he was tasked with teaching. It was the failure of a person who knew so much about what they were teaching that they couldn’t bring their knowledge back to earth. Damien stayed after the room cleared and waited for Merrin to notice him.

“Hello, Father Karras,” Merrin said. _Back to formalities_ , thought Damien. “Teaching,” Merrin said with a sharp exhale that sounded almost like a laugh.

“I’m not too fond of it myself,” said Damien. They began to walk together.

“Do you teach?”

“Sometimes. Guest lectures, that kind of thing. I’m not very good at it either.”

Merrin’s eyes crinkled at Damien’s casual acknowledgment.

“Why did you come here?” Damien asked.

“My heart, I think I told you.”

Damien tried to remember.

“Come with me,” Merrin said as they approached the Residence. Damien did.

The old men lived down their own hall, quieter and more private than where Damien lived. Merrin opened the door to his room and invited Damien to step inside. Damien looked around. He saw books everywhere, some small relics he assumed were from Iraq, pill bottles. He leaned against a bookshelf and picked up a copy of _The Seven Pillars of Wisdom_.

Merrin spoke:

 

“I loved you, so I drew these tides of

Men into my hands

And wrote my will across the

Sky in stars

To earn you freedom, the seven

Pillared worthy house,

That your eyes might be

Shining for me

When I came”.

Merrin took his glasses off. Damien thought the man might cry. He didn’t want to sit on the bed next to him. He felt unworthy, so he sat on the desk chair and faced him.

“I missed my chance to meet Lawrence,” Merrin said. “Not in the Middle East. I was in England and determined to meet him. I was still young then. But he died before I could find him.”

Damien sat and said nothing.

“I knew my own Dahoum,” Merrin said. Damien didn’t know what that meant.

“What?” Damien asked.

Merrin paused for a long time.

“You can talk to me,” Damien said.

“I loved someone there.” Merrin’s eyes were shining. He seemed to struggle for words. Damien moved to the bed and put his hand on Merrin’s shoulder.

“We met on a dig when I was still a student. H—he was my guide. He was the reason I went there for the past fifty years. I loved him terribly. And he’s gone.”

Damien hugged Merrin close to him. He felt strange doing it. But the man seemed to welcome it.

“He never knew,” Merrin continued. Now the words were coming, the burden having been eased. “I couldn’t tell him, I couldn’t. He had a wife, children. Even if I wanted to, how could I justify the hurt I would have caused them? There were times when I believed that if he only would have turned to me, I wouldn’t resist, he would have been making the choice and I wasn’t at fault. But he didn’t.”

“I understand,” Damien said, and Merrin knew that that was true. Merrin put his hand on Damien’s cheek. Tears wet the old man’s face.

Merrin began to recite again:

“Our brief wage

Ours for the moment

Before Earth’s soft hand explored your shape

And the blind

Worms grew fat upon

Your substance”.

Damien felt Merrin shake against his body. They sat there. Damien stroked Merrin’s hair. Priests denied themselves any measure of physical closeness. It was dangerous. Damien had forgotten how it felt just to touch someone else.

“I loved no other person. And I turned to God and I learned to love humanity, but abstractly. Do you understand, Damien?” Merrin lifted his head and looked into Damien’s eyes.

“Yes.”

“And now...” Merrin turned away from Damien. “He’s dead. The last time I saw him, he held me for a long time and told me not to go, but I had to. And that was all. And I can’t feel love anymore.”

Damien thought for a long time. He felt warmth from Merrin. He seemed to be filled with love. But he remembered his own failures. Merrin was covering up just as he was.

“Please say something, Damien,” Merrin whispered and turned back to look at him.

“I loved someone too,” Damien finally said.

“Yes, I know,” Merrin said. “I’ve watched you.”

Damien turned away. He was too exposed.

“It’s painful,” Merrin said. Damien expected him to say something else, but he didn’t. Merrin held Damien close now, and his tremors steadied for a moment. Damien felt incredible fondness for Merrin then, even if neither had words to reassure the other. Damien had no insight to give, but he only wanted Merrin to know that he was there. It was enough.


End file.
